January 1, 2009

Where has the time gone, here we are into another new year discussing a very old subject.  I know some of you are getting tired of hearing this, but judging from what I see, most people aren't getting it, so I'm going to reiterate my lessons on backup.

Reloading a computer can be a time consuming annoying task.  If you reload the complete hard drive, it can take as much as a whole day, even when you know what you are doing.  With all the updates to Windows and the programs themselves, not even considering your personal setup of each of your software programs, you are going to spend days getting everything back.  The best alternative, drive imaging.  I think this software is the best invention since computers.  If you image your computer, you can be up and running in about 1/2 hour with the computer exactly the way it was when you made the image.

I am in the habit of running an image before I install any software or Windows updates.  There have been several occasions where I wasn't happy with the way the computer worked or it didn't work at all, so then I just restored the image and was back in business.

Another point to keep in mind about imaging is that Windows Vista uses almost three times as much disk space as your software does, just for the system restore feature, which by the way, doesn't always work.  You can save a lot of disk space just by turning off system restore and being diligent about running your disk images.

One problem with disk imaging is that people tend to get complacent as to checking the images to make sure they are running OK and verifying they are OK.  Click here for more info on checking your images.

I always see the people who don't backup, or check their backups, and then need someone to attempt to restore normalcy.  Well, unfortunately, there is only so much one can do to get things working and restored.  Nothing is a convenient or time saving as drive imaging.  Just make sure you have images to protect against viruses or spyware in you backups.  I always image a new computer before doing anything as far as setting it up.  Then I make an image after all my software and setups are installed and configured.  These two images are kept in a safe place in case I need them again.  Then I do weekly and monthly images.  This way if something is corrupt in the weekly image, I can backup my date files and restore the monthly image.

You can "what if" backups to death, but one thing usually seems to be for sure, if you plan for a couple of contingencies, they usually don't happen.  If you don't plan for problems, I'll put you on my schedule.